On Apr 12, 2008, at 10:08 AM, William Conger wrote:
How can opinions be distinct from taste and judgment?
It seems obvious that an opinion is a judgment. If
taste does not reflect judgment how is it formed?
Taste, opinion, judgment are all aspects of the same
thing, judgment. Judgment does not require reasoning.
It may include received opinion and it always
includes feelings
Perhaps it's useful to look at the words themselves:
Judgment consists of a conclusion reached from study and reflection.
Opinion is, as you say, a variety of judgment. Taste is a sensation,
or by a slight extension, a reaction to a sensory stimulus.
So, on the matter of taste v. judgment: the provocation of taste is
more essentially sensorial. It looks good, it tastes terrible, it
smells funny, it sounds horrible, it feels slimy. Judgment is
distanced from that, remote from the raw sensorial experience, and the
difference is quite succinctly captured in Mark Twain's quip,
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
When one speaks of another person's taste in something, the "default
position" for that expression is that the person exhibits a
predilection for X. Taste, moreover, implies liking the form or
physical qualities of X as an object of a sense. If, separately, you
think X is unworthy, unpleasant, unskilled, unwholesome, unhealthy,
ungood, then you deem the other person's taste to be bad; and if you,
separately, think X is good, moral, uplifting, skilled, delightful,
you deem the person's taste to be good.
We refer to our own personal experiences as the basis of evaluating
taste ("I hate mushrooms; I can't see what you find tasty about
them"), which is different from how we judge and evaluate judgments.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
